In a recent discovery, NASA found some mysterious electron superhighway moving above the Earth. Some electrons are moving at the speed of light above the surface of Earth, but the space agency isn't sure why.
According to the new study, the tiny charged particles were found accelerating to high speeds in an unexpected part of space, farther from Earth than previously realized.
The region these fast electrons were found, known as the foreshock, is the part of the solar system where charged particles streaming from the sun are thought to be reflected back from Earth's magnetic field.
Until now, scientists aren't sure whether the region could speed up particles to the degree that was observed.
According to NASA, Lynn Wilson, lead author on the paper of these results at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, said, "This affects pretty much every field that deals with high-energy particles, from studies of cosmic rays to solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which have the potential to damage satellites and affect astronauts on expeditions to Mars."
According to Yahoo news, charged particles that were speeding towards the Earth from the sun encounter an area of space called the "bow-shock." That region is something like a protective zone that helps shield our planet from the solar wind.
Some of the electron particles in foreshock region are highly energetic, fast moving electrons and ions. Historically, scientists have thought one way these particles get to such high energies is by bouncing back and forth across the bow-shock, gaining extra energy from each collision.
However, the new observations suggest the particles can also gain energy through electromagnetic activity in the foreshock region itself.
The observations that led to this discovery were taken from one of the THEMIS - short for Time History of Events and Macro-scale Interactions during Sub-storms - mission satellites. The five THEMIS satellites circled Earth to study how the planet's magnetosphere captured and released solar wind energy, in order to understand what initiates the geomagnetic sub-storms that cause aurora. The THEMIS orbits took the spacecraft across the foreshock boundary regions. The primary THEMIS mission concluded successfully in 2010 and now two of the satellites collect data in orbit around the moon.
High energy particles have been found in the foreshock region from the past 50 years, but until now no one had seen that these particles originate from the foreshock region itself. This is partially due to the short timescale on which the electrons are accelerated, as previous observations had averaged over several minutes, which may have hidden any event.
Up next, the researchers are working on gathering information from THEMIS to determine the specific mechanism behind these electron accelerations.
